SB Nation User Blog: jds2

Dusty Baker Scool of Kotching or Why the reds won't be relevent the rest of the decade

jds2 — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:48:45 -0000

as read on espn
sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=spring_training
"Dusty Baker says the game's current emphasis on on-base percentage is taking away from something else hitters need to do: swing the bat."
Seriously...not that I mind the thought of Dusty running the Reds further into the ground but it's took nearly a full season for the cubs to De-Bakerfy themselves. Further in the article it talks about Adam Dunn needing to be more aggressive.
Umm...Dusty, Adam Dunn at one point had the record for most K's in a season. Clearly between this and the patterson/Harriston Jr they are well on their way to a 100 lost season by end of the decade.

stating the obvious about this week

jds2 — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:22:06 -0000

Very big week coming up. With the cardinals playing milwalkee the cubs aren't left with room for error because with the cardinals latest surge they are in the picture of the NLC race. Every game we win means we are either gaining on the cardinals or catching up with the brewers, but with a loss we either let the cardinals creep up on us or fall further back of the brewers.

Furthermore with the state of our big 3 (aram, Lee, and fonzie) being shakey at best it is time to see who can step up out of our 2nd teir players. I see this going a couple of different ways.
worse case: everybody pushes to hard and then we struggle like last year.

Middle case: everyone steps it up a little bit and we play good team baseball and we scrap together a few wins and basically tread water.

Best case: Like fontenot/theriot did earlier a young guy gets hot and catalizes the team. Hopefully we can have one or more of the following: Ronny C, Murton, Pie, EPatt, Soto(if he gets called up), can use the oportunity they have to play well enough that lou has no choice but to play them when Fonzie comes back and then continue to contribute into the playoffs.

Hopefully we can win both series and take the NLC lead...or at least hold ground one more week.

Go Cubs

Bonds is the steroid scapegoat

jds2 — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:27:54 -0000

I personally beleive the owners probably knew that Performance Enhancing drugs were being used as early as the mid 90's...But they turned a blind eye to it because MLB was in the process of recovering from the strike and the canceled world series. The Sosa/McGuire Chase of '98, at the time, was credited with saving the game after the strike and also ushered in an era of increased offense as well as ticket sales now called the "steroid era".
Now the owners are throwing bonds under the bus so they can act tough on steroid after letting it go for the better part of a decade. However, the owners did not initiate the drug testing program currently in place it was congress. If not for congress the owners probably would still be ignoring the large steriod using elephant in the room.

Let me ask you this if a bunch of truck drivers were on amphetamines so they can drive longer hours and the head of the trucking company knew about it and did nothing wouldn't he be considered just as guilty. I'm not saying bud or any other owners knew steroids were going on, but it seems like they tried very hard to not know it was going on so they could have denyability later.

Baseball players who cheated and took steroids should be punished severely, but let's not overlook who made the most money from the steroid era, the owners. Shouldn't they be punished as well?

Go Cubs

Lets try again. Eric "not Corey" Patterson Called up

jds2 — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:50:24 -0000

cubs.com recently just announce EPatt is to be called up for the game tonight presumably with Soriano going to the 15-Day DL. It doesn't say where patterson will be playing but he has had limited PT in the OF while primarily being a 2B. Batting leadoff his hit .300 w/ a .365 OBP.

While I like Pie, I am glad that EPatt is given this chance since MLB pitchers will probably not have as much scouting on EPatt as FPie. So hopefully he can get hot and add the youth movement of the 2007 Cubs.

Go Cubs

Did ARam damage Cordero?

jds2 — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 23:33:55 -0000

Up 5-4 with two outs and a runner on third base just before Francisco Cordero threw a first pitch walk off HR to ARam Cordero's season to date states looked like this:
IP:33.3 ERA:2.41 SV%:93.1%
His stats, including the 2 run HR, since then are as follows:
IP:12.2 ERA:7.11 SV%:63.6%

I think it is worth noting that for Cordero to return to a 2.41 ERA he would have to pitch 24.2 consecutive shutout innings, so even though the 12.2 innings is a small sample size it is enough to show a change in perfomance.
Now it is possible that ARam's HR is an effect, and not the cause, of Cordero's struggles. But regardless, it seems pretty clear that Cordero's pre June 29th numbers are much better than his post June 29th numbers. Hopefully the pre June 29th Cordero doesn't return because the Cubs have really benefitted from the poor play from the brewers pen.

To compare Dempster's stats for the season are:
IP:40.2 ERA:3.76 SV%:89.5%

Go Cubs!

Poll

Who would you rather have as a closer?

Cordero

26 votes

Dempster

24 votes

50 votes | Poll has closed